Re: [Nmh-workers] 1.7's `make clean' is Overzealous.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

I'm jumping in at the end because I haven't been able to keep up with
recent emails...

> Like I said, I only have a beef with sysconfdir; I'm fine with a
> hardcoded appending for libexecdir.

I took all files that matched /etc/* here and looked up their package.
These are the packages that own more than one file in /etc, with their
files.

    filesystem
        arch-release    host.conf       mtab            resolv.conf
        crypttab        hosts           nsswitch.conf   securetty
        fstab           issue           passwd          shadow
        group           ld.so.conf      profile         shells
        gshadow         motd
    glibc
        gai.conf  locale.gen  nscd.conf  rpc
    bash
        bash.bash_logout  bash.bashrc
    cronie
        anacrontab  cron.deny
    iana-etc
        protocols  services
    idnkit
        idnalias.conf  idn.conf
    lm_sensors
        healthd.conf  sensors3.conf
    lynx
        lynx.cfg  lynx.lss
    mailcap
        mailcap  mime.types
    pacman
        makepkg.conf  pacman.conf

So only filesystem and glibc own more than two, and I think they both
get let off.

Frankly, nmh has had trouble with bowel control over the decades.
Here's its 34.

    bash_completion_nmh  mhl.headers          scan.curses
    components           mhl.reply            scan.default
    digestcomps          mhl.replywithoutbody scan.highlighted
    distcomps            mhn.defaults         scan.mailx
    forwcomps            mhshow.marker        scan.MMDDYY
    MailAliases          mts.conf             scan.nomime
    mhical.12hour        rcvdistcomps         scan.size
    mhical.24hour        rcvdistcomps.outbox  scan.time
    mhl.body             replcomps            scan.timely
    mhl.digest           replgroupcomps       scan.unseen
    mhl.format           rmmproc.messageid    scan.YYYYMMDD
    mhl.forward

I expect few are on death row for future releases;  someone, somewhere,
will be using any contenders.  And there's more to be added as we give
standard ones that use new format functions, etc.

I think GNU's gospel includes /etc.

    https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html

    If your program installs a large number of files into one of the
    standard user-specified directories, it might be useful to group
    them into a subdirectory particular to that program.  If you do
    this, you should write the install rule to create these
    subdirectories.

Mind you, it also says /etc is for read-only data particular to a
machine, e.g. it would be edited.  scan.time should be in
/usr/share/nmh?  But that's not a 1.7.1 thing.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy